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Among the names of the old settlers whom we fondly call our fathers, there is scarcely one around which does not cluster many gems of story and anecdote, bring to mind a fellow of infinite jest; of most excellent fancy."

This was no chance or isolated expression of his affection. In a Journal of travel which he kept in 1841, he wrote some verses which, whatever their faults—and, as the footnote which he added shows, he was not oblivious of them — are an evidence of genuine feeling for the place:

MY NATIVE VILLAGE

My native village! where the tall
Steepled church, and round green hill,
Sundays, holidays, all recall,

The school-house, green, pond and the mill.

"Tis a lovely spot-my birthplace, No one dingy craft o'erruns thee,

Each neighbour with neighbour keeps pace,

The road like religion is free.

The hills! I know them all, and one

I feign it knows me, for my name,

Where last each night shines bright the sun,

On tallest trees is carved for fame! *

Will it be credited that I have omitted some worse verses than the above?

Among these scenes and under the eyes of some of the elders he had described, the boy learned his a, b, c's with the children of the neighbors in the village school - a little red brick building which stood only a few rods from his home, and of which he had vivid memories half a century later:

The flat, square-roofed schoolhouse had got to be very old, and out of repair, though the inside was newly whittled over every winter by the jack-knives of the larger boys in attendance. The wide fireplace, where the largest green logs were hospitably entertained, I well remember, as it was also used by the schoolmasters to season their birch switches by running them through the hot

ashes between the andirons. The house was planted where the village was expected to grow up, but the village pushed off in another direction, and it became necessary to build another more centrally located. The district, therefore, put up, with the aid of the masons, a two-story brick schoolhouse, the wonder in 1820 of the surrounding towns.

Before the school opened, usually the first Monday after Thanksgiving, the boys were to be rigged out in their winter suits of homespun, fulled cloth, made up by a woman tailor, and the girls in red or claret pressed flannels. For the first day in this bran-new schoolhouse my bran-new suit had been provided. Of course I started early, not so much to study arithmetic and geography as to have a good time with my fellow-playmates, sure to be there. As there was a mill-pond just in the rear of the schoolhouse, covered the previous night with ice, very glare and rather thin, the boys must all have the luxury of a slide and mark it with the nails in the heels of their boots. I bravely went in for my share of the sport. Some poet, was it Wordsworth? writes:

"The ice was thin

They all fell in,

The rest ran away."

I was not among the "rest" and so had to go home and hear what mother said about it. She asked how deep was the water, and when told it only came up to my arm-pits, "Oh," said she, "then there was not much danger of your being drowned, but don't go there again, and you must go to school to-day in your old clothes, for your new ones will not be fit to put on before to-morrow and I fear they will cockle and never look so well again. Aren't you sorry?" I couldn't answer, but of course I was, and a certain part of that pond never after afforded pleasant memories.

Another reminiscence, tinged also with bitterness, takes its place with this, though it may have a still earlier origin:

Little boys are not prepared to suffer and they have no philosophy that satisfactorily submits to the loss of a pet dog or the disappointment of a rainy day that keeps them at home when otherwise they might have been present at a muster of the militia or had a view of the elephant and other monsters of a menagerie.

In 1817 President Monroe visited New England. He was, though a Virginian, an enthusiast in favor of American manufactures, and came clad in homespun. While at Boston he was urged by Colonel Amos Binney, then a federal office-holder, I believe, to visit Strafford to view the copperas works, just started and of which Colonel Binney was one of the largest shareholders. There was not much to be seen except the rusty heaps of ore and beautiful green crystals of copperas as they hung upon the branches of the beech when lifted from the vats, but the President was persuaded and came. The journey was made in a carriage-andfour, and was necessarily slowly made, and more so in consequence of the many town receptions on the way. It was the "era of good feeling" and all parties united in doing honor to the President. It was an event and the people made the most of it, but there were few newspapers in those days and the mails were carried in the most primitive way, often only on horseback, and the news of the President's coming barely preceded him by a few hours, yet that was sufficient to call out most of the oldest as well as the youngest inhabitants.

In my father's house there were then but two children, myself and a sister five years older, who lived until her fifteenth birthday and died. I well remember her large and lovely brown eyes and her constant care of me.

As the only boy then of my parents and living in the village, they felt bound to dress me in the latest style of the village. My pantaloons and jacket were made as one garment, but decorated with abundance of buttons. The white starched neckcollar, widespreading over the shoulders, was finished with a ruffle. My head, like those of four or five other boys, was covered with a stiff, bell-topped, red morocco hat. That seemed to be the ne plus ultra of fashion, and thus we marched on foot from Strafford to the village, two and a half miles away, nearest from the Copperas Works, then called Lower Village or Lower Hollow.

The people lined the highway and waited some hours for the Presidential party. Waited, in fact, until it began to rain, and then, when the carriage of the President came, it passed through the village or as far as the crowd of the townspeople extended and returned. The President looked out of the carriage window, bowed along the way, and departed. The great festival was over. But the little boys in the rain with red hats had to trudge

home, two and a half miles. It was not good for the boys and bad for the hats, which were by no means waterproof. Thin, and built on pasteboard, they not only changed color in spots, but some wilted in spots. This might have been endured, but the jeers and laughter of other boys who failed to daze the road in the morning with the cardinal head regalia, was misfortune "rubbed in" and altogether too much for juvenile philosophy. The older pedestrians on our way home, however, prevented any breach of the peace. It was at all events a great day for the people of Strafford and for Colonel Binney, but not so for the red-hatted boys.

He continued to go to school in the little red schoolhouse until he had passed through the limited range of studies then offered and was ready to go to the Academy at Thetford ten miles away, where the children of the well-to-do families went to finish their education. That he was a boy of promise is clear from this, but it is emphatically recorded by one of his contemporaries that "he was not noted as being a very bright boy." The only evidence available upon his character as a student is that after attending Thetford Academy for one term, he went for another term to Randolph Academy which seems to have been regarded as a step higher. Both were, however, country academies in small towns, of which it would be unreasonable to expect much. The boy's scholastic attainments could hardly have been extensive, since he left school when he was fifteen, and there is no evidence that he was acquainted with the classics, nor with either French or German. It is on record, however, that he was ambitious to go to college and besought his father to send him.

I desired to obtain a college education, but my father said he was unable to send all his boys to college and felt that he ought to give all an equal chance. Upon my mentioning the matter to Judge Harris, he said that, by keeping school in the winter, I could doubtless work my way through [college], but he thought

I might as a merchant be more sure of an independence. He did not offer me any other aid until he offered co-partnership three or four years later, and so my school days ended.

His schooling though scanty was far from contemptible. He recalled in later life that he learned Spelling and Writing in the Common School and Reading as far as the American Preceptor and Scott's Lessons.

In penmanship, or chirography, as Allison Wrifford, the teacher, liked to call it, I won the prize he offered. No grammar was taught at school, but David Cobb, the lawyer of the town, offered to hear recitations in Lindley Murray and I had lessons in parsing Pope's "Essay on Man." At Thetford Academy the Preceptor, Mr. Fitch, drilled us in compositions and required accuracy in punctuation as well as in grammar. My father's house held few books, but Sterne's "Sentimental Journey" happened to be one and I was soon familiar with "My Uncle Toby." Judge Harris had a miscellaneous stock of books and allowed me to borrow anything he had, such as the History of England, Scott's and Cooper's novels, the "Federalist," and Jefferson's "Notes on Virginia."

I had no other schooling beyond that already indicated, save at writing schools and a term at book-keeping by double-entry, but my Sabbath days (save the hours at church) and evenings with a tallow candle were early and late devoted either to study or general reading.

Meantime he let slip no opportunity to broaden his knowledge. "You may remember," he wrote to Judge Barrett, "that while you were at Dartmouth, you gave me helpful assistance in starting me in French. Of course I began to buy books as soon as I was able to pay for them, and it has taken a long time and much labor to obtain whatever has been of any real value to me in the way of a moderate education."

It is clear from the sequel that Judge Harris's suggestion that "I might as a merchant be more sure of an independence," was one of the determining factors in Morrill's career.

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